an examination on homes

on discovering where to rest between brutal motherhood and burning out

i disappeared because i struggled a lot over the past couple of weeks. i won’t sugarcoat that.

i saw myself break, saw through the reflection of the glass on the floor who did it, and broke again once i got the chance to retreat and lick my wounds. being home was lovely— predictable surroundings, friends, food— but being home was without a doubt brutal. without a doubt the sledgehammer that sent me flying in pieces. 

and i hesitate to even say that; home, because the next few years have nudged me into an uncomfortable gray area. i have my childhood home, an amalgamation of sensations and memories that in equal parts agonize and petrify me, and i have my dorm, comfortable but all the same a reminder of the pressure i am currently under. a place where i have broken down too, even for much simpler, easier reasons to handle. 

though both places have housed me in different ways, i suppose having two homes is having no homes. and before i get bombarded with disagreements, i didn’t ever say that that’s a particularly terrible thing. 

the earth is simply a collection of places, and the world a collection of organisms. it wasn’t meant to evolve so somebody with so many thoughts stifling their head that they have prescribed pills to silence them can type away at their laptop until words don’t carry much meaning anymore. it truly, really, didn’t want to evolve to realize the sheer amount of characters that can be crammed into a naive run-on sentence. 

but on homes. i want to share two memories. 

january 11th, 2023 

white knuckles grasping the frame of the glass sliding door, i crouch in my oversized shirt and pajama pants. my bare feet sweat so much that they repeatedly perform a slip-nudge-knock-fall dance against the tile. my hands shake hard enough to rattle the breaths i draw through my quivering lips. my body is shackled down invisibly, my mind on another planet. 

“i just want you to talk to me, mom,” i say, voice breaking as i look, really look, at this woman in front of me. her eyes are red-rimmed, a cigarette between her fingers and a glass of champagne on the table next to her as her hair nonchalantly sways in the nighttime breeze. but she is unmoved. unphased. “before you let things build up—i can’t take months of emotion put on me in a single night, in twenty minutes.” 

she sighs. “you’ve been hard to talk to. you get so defensive. about your friends, and books, and—” she meets my eyes with a terrible sadness i’ve cut myself on after nights like these. i know what she’s about to say and begin to crumble before it even leaves her mouth. “—i don’t care that you’re gay. this isn’t about that. you have to understand that it’s hard for me.” 

i wither in the backyard. i say a prayer to a god whose belief has expired within me. i wish to be anywhere but here, but that really wouldn’t matter even if i was, would it? because this place would still be here, and my family would still dig knives into me to see where my skin gives in the name of idle conversation. blood would fall from me and my mother would sweetly bandage me, telling me that she loves me and is proud of me. i will never be able to discern whether she’s feigning softness to see if i cave or simply comforting me because she knows i’m hurt; not that she knows she was holding the blade. 

in that moment, i swallow down more cries. i don’t yell, because she’ll yell back, and i couldn’t take that. “you say that, but you’re still working on accepting me,” i tell her, keeping my voice level so she doesn’t accuse me of being defensive. so she doesn’t find a loophole in my vulnerability to turn in her favor and send the ground flying from beneath me. 

she scoffs. “i accepted the fact that you were gay years ago.” she sees me again, and i calculate my steps to the sink in the event i make myself sick replaying the memories of coming out throughout the years. “you’re a dyke.” she laughs like it’s a joke. i wonder why parts of me always have to be funny to her. another sigh. “your generation is just—” she shakes her head, in utter disgust. contempt, even, at the contents of my generation. “you can never be straight. you’re all brainwashed. indoctrinated. it’s the downfall of society.” 

and she never got to raise me, and she’s been lied to, and she’s dealing with a lot, and i shiver, bite my tongue, and allow her to steal parts of me to build herself up. it’s all i know how to do. 

before i sleep, i stare at the palm tree outside my window, my cat resting on my thigh. there are good things in home. my childhood home has a cat who only knows kind words and open arms, freshly painted houses, and chai teas blended with nostalgia. 

that will never, ever wipe away the high school population that spun antisemetic dog whistles like toys or the parents that willingly closed their minds because of fox news’ exploitative lexicon. 

january 16th, 2023 

i sit on my bed, criss-cross and back hunched in a way that’ll come back to haunt me once i properly lie down. now, though, i don’t bother with discomfort because it’s no longer tangible to me. i am in a place that asks nothing of me but work i want to do, and in a group of people that expect nothing more than my most authentic self, whoever that may be. there is no defending. no downfall.

as i do whenever i leave my childhood home, i rediscover myself, rewelcome it into my bones. we have plans to shave my head. we have wonderful things that, though difficult, we look forward to. we have ourselves and that is more than i could ever say nestled in the lodge of newport beach, california. 

my friends click-tip-tap at their laptops, one indulging in a new graphic design program and the other finding something to read. i watch when they aren’t, taking in all i’m thankful for as i too, shamelessly alternate between writing of my own and the sims 4. our silent agreement to exist in comfortable, uninterrupted space together makes me sigh. not an angry or exasperated one, but a release of the giddy contentment building up in my chest. 

there’s a lesbian flag on my wall, notes from the one i love most on my desk. my parents numbers sit on the wall too, there but unthreatening. i decide when to pick up the phone. i get to prepare and steel myself. i am in my surroundings— present, participating, prepared. no advantages. it’s my ball court. 

i have buried remnants of my disturbed selves in the space between newport beach and syracuse, i have bid them goodbye because we had to separate in order to survive. they still exist within me in pieces, and we talk. there’s the piece coming back from verbal spears, the one that doesn’t feel belonging anywhere, because her friends always find happiness faster, more efficiently. as i said in a year-old poem, forensics, “a beginning, an end/a rising sun giving light to the morning mist, and the multitude of selves that died for the victory of the end result.”

i’m happy here, in our self-nurtured peace without anyone’s infectious fear and rage to break through our bubble. 

i will always have my mother’s voice stuck in my head. wherever i go, an angry woman with a cigarette will ceaselessly remind me that i am different and that i really shouldn’t wear that and that she’s working on it while parroting the same paranoid rhetoric about immigrants, about change, about us-versus-them. she will be behind me every day for the rest of my life, but that doesn’t mean i have to give her the pleasure of angering me too. 

that night, we sit, five piled onto one xl-twin bed, knees knocking against elbows. a children’s movie plays and we laugh, laugh, laugh. we eat bread and cheese like mice. we prepare for tomorrow and the tomorrow after tomorrow, unaffected by the world that wants to eat us. 

so, i have a place. many places. i can stay there, visit there, but i cannot live there. my childhood home i suspect would devour me until my sense of self was warped and barbed and red. college dorms, well, they provide me with the support system i sought during my teen years, but they too have to end come summer. there’s numerous coffeehouses, theaters, bookstores where i indulge in the same peace, but there isn’t a home that’s set in stone. 

that’s okay. i’ve perfected the art of drifting, of in-betweens. i know in myself, in bodies with dyed, curly hair and the single most radiant, affected smile i’ve ever seen, in friendships stronger than anything, that i’ll find a place that’s mine. 

¹

1. a lovely little spice village i want to own in my future home, when i find it